The bottle is then riddled, so that the lees settles in the neck of the wine bottle...
Manual riddling is still done for Prestige Cuvées in Champagne... mechanised riddling equipment (a gyropalette) is used instead.
(Wikipedia)

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Saturday, February 20, 2016

I am able to report that Thursday Mycology Nights at the Old Entomologist have returned to their customary state of comity and tranquillity. Things were fraught and divisive for a while, roiled up by the "Paroxysmic Stinkhorn" scandal... in which (for those of you who were not paying attention) Space-Time Eddie reported his discovery of a phallic, macrame-foreskinned toadstool with a bouquet of putrescine and cadaverine that makes it unspeakably vile to blokes but tips the ladies over into instant orgasm.
It all seemed plausible enough that ladies with their feebler brains might be so easily controlled by fungal pheromones.

However, responses leanedmore towards skepticism than enthusiasm. Asparagus was cast upon Eddie's qualifications, and in particular upon the "World Renowned Scientist" Certificate of Doctorating that he won from Swearing Bob in a thumb-wrestling contest. The "native legend" and other details of his account -- intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative -- were insufficiently corroborative. In the past, Eddie had nearly convinced Evangeline van Holsterin (head barmaid at the Old Entomologist) to put his toadstool-tinctured homebrew on tap, claiming various restorative and enhancing qualities for it; so an especially harsh critic could portray him as having a vested interest in commercialising his discovery (or more accurately, a bogan-t-shirted interest).

"These are the wrong kind of mush-
rooms", Another Kiwi vouchsafed

Anyway... tigris was able to inform the latest meeting that the odour of the purportedly climactic toadstool is equally abhorrent to males and females (after tracking it down by following Eddie's description), also to Tleilaxu gholas and to Ktistec machines. Which of course does not rule it out as a possible ingredient for future batches of Christmas Ale. Brewmaster Greenish Hugh thinks it might complement the vegetal tones of parsnip and yerba mate.We expect the dramatised account of her epic stinkhorn expedition to feature as a future production from Riddled Amateur Dramatic Society, or failing that, as a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Until then, you will have to content yourselves with the entertaining and lightly-fictionalised version available here.